Truth and Consequences
by also known as LuLu
Summary: As Bryan Denton learns, when you tell the truth, be prepared to pay the price.


DISCLAIMER: Newsies is property Disney, but Rosemary and the Professor are mine. This "R" rating is for implied (meaning inexplicit, not graphic) consensual sex between adults and minors, slash and non-slash.  
  
1 Truth and Consequences  
  
By LuLu  
  
'Afternoon, gentlemen. This seat here? Yes, that's fine.  
  
Why ask that? You already know my name.  
  
For the official records? Bryan Denton, age thirty-four. I've been working here since 1888 as an Assistant War Correspondent. About two years after that I was promoted to Ace War Correspondent. Recently I had a stint as field reporter, but since then I've gone back to my former position.  
  
When did I decide to become a newspaperman? That's a pretty simple question, gentlemen, and I know that's not why I'm here. Well, then, whatever you say. And of course I'll tell the truth.  
  
Her name was Rosemary; Rosemary Miller. She was a teaching assistant to my Journalism professor at the university I attended when I was seventeen. That's right, seventeen. I was smart as a whip when I was a kid. And since you're asking for the truth, I won't deny that Rosemary was beautiful. She was petite twenty-five year old, with long, wavy red hair and ivory skin dappled with freckles, especially during the fall after the summer sun had brought them out. Her eyes were bluer than any water or any sky I've ever seen. She was the most beautiful woman ever to walk into my life. A good reporter always pays attention to details like that.  
  
I was just about to get to that part, gentleman. Yes, she and I _did_ have a sexual relationship when I was a student. She did not pressure me into it, and I did not pressure her, either. It was a mutual decision. I had gone to see Professor Harland (my Journalism professor, of course) after class one day for some extra help on a paper I was writing, and I found Rosemary sitting at his desk, correcting a stack of essays. She said hello to me and mentioned that Professor Harland was at a staff meeting.  
  
"What do you need, Bryan?" she asked.  
  
I told her about my paper, some boring thing about the condition of fish markets, and she offered to help me. She had the training, but not the degree, so she saw no harm in it, and neither did I. I pulled up a seat and we began to work together.  
  
I know I mentioned how beautiful Rosemary was, but for the first time that day I finally realized just _how_ much she enamored me. It was the way she smiled at me, the way the sun coming in through the open side window spilled onto her hair, making it shine. It was the way her fingers looked when they gripped and wrote with her red correcting pencil, and the way her eyebrows arched when she went deep into thought over a question I asked. Every thing about her I couldn't help but be crazy about.  
  
Somewhere in between the efficient way to avoid comma splices and the reason for pyramid paragraphs, we kissed. It was one of those sweet kisses they write about in novels, where the hero and heroine are turning their heads to look at each other, and by mistake their lips meet. It left me breathless and blushing when the contact broke, but at the same time hoping for more. I looked over at her, and I could tell in her face that she felt the same way. I leaned in to taste those red lips again, and –  
  
I'm sorry, sirs, but I _can't_ leave out the sentiment. If I did, there would be no reason for me to be telling this. I'll try my best, though, to satisfy your request.  
  
Rosemary and I made love on Professor Harland's desk. About twenty minutes after we both got redressed, Professor Harland came back from his meeting. He allowed Rosemary to leave the room, thanking her for her help, and assisted me with the rest of my paper. I got a B+ on it.  
  
When were we found out? About three months later. Someone saw Rosemary leaving my campus room late one night and told the dean. They conducted an investigation, and found out the truth from my roommate. We were both reprimanded – I was suspended from the university for a month, but she was asked to leave the school. I suppose that they believed Rosemary had forced me to have this relationship, but I was too afraid to step forward and tell them otherwise.  
  
The last time I saw her was the day she left. She was packing up her things in Professor Harland's office when I came in.  
  
"Hello, Bryan," she said to me as I entered. "I thought you'd come."  
  
"I'll always come," I told her earnestly. "Always, Rosemary. Just to be with you." I think at the time the shock hadn't quite fully settled in. Not only that, I was young, idealistic, and blinded by what I believed to be love.  
  
Rosemary looked at me, and then back at the box she was packing. She took a book out of the box and handed it to me wordlessly. Something in her face looked wistful, and her eyes were clouded. The book I took from her was a leather-bound copy of Charles Dickens' Hard Times.  
  
"Have you ever read it?" she asked me. I shook my head. "There is a girl in this story, Louisa Gradgrind, who marries a wealthy old bachelor for the sake of her family, never loving him. And then she begins to have an affair with a man named James Harthouse, who helps her realize that the way she was raised, never feeling emotions, was a lie. Harthouse asks her to run away with him, but she won't. Instead, she goes back home to her father." She stopped to breathe. "Louisa reminds me of myself sometimes."  
  
I blinked. "What do you mean?" I asked her.  
  
"Bryan, you're a clever student. You should be able to make the connection." But I shook my head at her, feeling slow and confused under the haze of scandal and retribution. She smiled and let out a small sigh. "All right, Bryan. I said that I'm Louisa, right? Well, you're Harthouse."  
  
"I am?" She nodded and I felt a little pride. "But who's the wealthy old bachelor?"  
  
"Professor Harland."  
  
My heart stopped for a moment as those words reached my ears.  
  
"You…you're married to Professor Harland?" I asked slowly.  
  
"No!" Rosemary immediately objected. "What I mean is, I've been involved with him. For about a year now, and…and I thought that maybe he was the one. His reccomendation was the reason I had gotten this job, and I thought that this is how it should be because of that. But then you came along, Bryan, and I realized that I didn't have to be in bed with a man I despised to achieve what I wanted. I got happiness from you."  
  
I smiled. "You did?"  
  
"Yes." She paused. "But…like Louisa, I can't be with you anymore."  
  
My heart nearly stopped again. This couldn't be right. I loved Rosemary, and she loved me…didn't she?  
  
"You love me, right, Rosemary?" I asked her.  
  
"Yes…no…oh God, I don't know," she admitted, putting a hand to her face, seeming almost frustrated. "But I do know that what we did was wrong, just like what Louisa did with Harthouse was wrong, and I can't keep doing something wrong anymore. I have to get away, Bryan."  
  
Everything I had felt for three months shattered at that point. Rosemary was leaving me. She didn't love me. Though she was standing in front of me, it was like she was already gone.  
  
"Where will you go?" I asked quietly.  
  
"Back home, to Minnesota." She had once told me that her father owned a farm there, and she had grown up among cows and haystacks. "You understand, don't you?"  
  
I shook my head and said, "No."  
  
"You will someday," she said as she picked up her box of belongings and headed for the door. "Will you open that for me?" Silently, I did. "Thank you, Bryan," she said, smiling at me and starting to head down the hall to the stairwell. I watched her, until I realized that I was still holding her book.  
  
"ROSEMARY!" I yelled, running towards her.  
  
She turned around and set down her box. "Yes?"  
  
"Your book," I told her, holding it out.  
  
"Keep it," she instructed me. "And read it, so that you know how I feel."  
  
"I love you, Rosemary," I said in a last-ditch attempt to make her stay.  
  
"I know." She then kissed me on the cheek gently. "Goodbye and good luck, Bryan. You're going to be a great writer someday. Just keep at it."  
  
Then she picked up her box and was gone. I spent my month away from school reading and re-reading Hard Times and nursing a broken heart as I began to fully understand what she meant.  
  
I know, gentlemen, I'm getting off subject, and I'm sorry. Let's just get on with what I'm here for, all right? I understand _you're_ the one asking the questions, yes. So please, go on, ask them.  
  
Ah, _now_ I understand. We're here about _him_. Very well. I'll tell the truth, of course. I have yet to lie, and I don't plan on it.  
  
We first met when the strike began, and I was looking for a story. One of his friends was leading the chant near the statue of Horace Greely, but I noticed that whenever he needed to speak, the friend went to him for the words. I went up to him after the friend entered the building for the World. I introduced myself as soon as he told me what exactly it was that they were doing.  
  
"I'm with the New York Sun. Bryan Denton," I informed him. "You seem like the kid in charge. What's your name?"  
  
He told me it was David Jacobs. Looking to his face, I noticed there was something in his eyes I hadn't seen in a long time. He had the same kind of eyes as Rosemary, that beautiful blue, with the same conscious clarity to them.  
  
"…As in David and Goliath?" I asked, teasing a little, and then asking seriously if Pulitzer would listen.  
  
"He has to," David told me matter-of-factly, but our conversation was interrupted when the friend and a child were thrown out onto the stoop of the World. I invited them to lunch to discuss the strike, and so I could get to know him a little better. But Jack, David's friend, did most of the talking, and I made conversation with him to be polite. Jack's brazen attitude was almost alarming. It was obvious that David was the cautious force holding him back.  
  
No, gentlemen, I didn't find out where he lived after I met him. I honestly still don't know. I didn't even see David again until the day I took the photograph for my story, but that's when it really began. I had offered to show him my office at the Sun that day.  
  
"Can Les come?" he asked. Les was his little brother, the one who had been thrown out of the World with Jack.  
  
"He'd probably be bored by it," I commented. " How about you send him home and come around later?" I told him, giving him the address. He stopped by shortly after seven o'clock.  
  
"Will we really be in the papers tomorrow?" David asked me as he entered my office after the polite hellos.  
  
"My editor says front page," I smiled at him and gestured for him to take a seat, but he declined and decided to stand. "But act surprised tomorrow, would you?" He smiled and nodded, his eyes shining. I commented him on them.  
  
"Oh!" He was surprised. "Thank you, I guess."  
  
"Someone special to me used to have eyes like yours." I was moving closer and closer to him, leaning over my desk and looking at him intently.  
  
"Mr. Denton?" he asked me, puzzled at the tone of my voice and my strange behavior.  
  
"Call me Bryan," I mumbled as I leaned in and kissed his lips briefly. It would have been longer if he hadn't pulled away.  
  
"W-what are you doing!?" David asked me, alarmed.  
  
"You have no idea how handsome you are, do you, David?"  
  
"H-handsome?"  
  
"You're very handsome. Like me, when I was your age." I stepped out from behind my desk and came face to face with him. For some reason, he wasn't objecting like I thought he would be, considering his initial reaction to my kiss. So I took the opportunity to kiss him again. This kiss was longer, and we only pulled away for air.  
  
"Is this right?" he asked me, a little confused. For a moment, I saw myself at his age in his face, and this time honestly.  
  
"Only if you want it to be," I told him. The same thing Rosemary had told me initially, and I believed it as much with her as I did with David. "Is your mother expecting you home soon?"  
  
"I told her I was going to the Lodging House, for strike business."  
  
I smiled and put my arm around his waist, savoring his mouth again. "Will she worry if you don't come home until tomorrow…?"  
  
He shook his head and returned the kiss. "She trusts Jack and the newsies."  
  
"So I can steal you away for the night?"  
  
He nodded.  
  
I'm sure you can guess what happened next, gentlemen. I took him to my home and we made love. I didn't trick him into it; he willingly sanctioned everything we did. The next morning we both went to work, him for the newsies and me for the Sun. Our relationship continued for the rest of the strike, and it was actually an up and down experience. We had to hide our affection from the boys, of course, and sometimes that caused us to hurt each other. Like the day I told them all you gentlemen had given me back my old job as War Correspondent. David was crushed by that. He thought I had betrayed not only the newsies, but him as well. I didn't get a chance to express my apology until late that night, when David came to my door, discouraged after his failed attempt to free his friend Jack from the Refuge. I thought for a moment that maybe David really loved him, not me, but we showed each other who our true feelings were for. The evening after, David came to my door with Les, his sister Sarah, and Jack, with a deliberate smirk on his face and a plan, with the company he'd brought, to print the story you gentleman had refused to publish. I'm surprised none of them caught on that night because we were working so close, but I suppose we were all caught up in the thrill of overturning Pulitzer. And after we won, what a victory David and I celebrated that night! It was amazing. I had thought I'd known passion with Rosemary, but I had been wrong. David was a much better lover than Rosemary had ever been, and I was so glad that each night I was able to hold him in my arms, to kiss his lips, to run my fingers through his soft, curly hair, and to feel his body pressed against mine.  
  
Who found us out this time, you ask? I thought it was David's mother who had visited you about this, gentlemen, after catching us in a stolen kiss soon after. But of course you can't tell me that; you have to keep your informants anonymous. As you can see, though, what Esther Jacobs thought was right – I'm in love with her son, though she won't allow me to see him now that she knows about us.  
  
Time for my punishment already? I can see you didn't have to deliberate long, gentlemen, or maybe not at all. No, of course I'm not insulting you. What have you decided for me? Suspension? Demotion?  
  
Dismissal.  
  
I understand, gentlemen…but I have no regrets. I knew what I was doing when I entered this room.  
  
When you speak the truth, you have to pay the penalty. I learned that when I wrote about the rally and you reassigned me, and I know it even better now. The only thing I hope is that I am not blacklisted for this. The incident with David was isolated and will not be repeated. It never even interfered with my work; in fact, it made me strive harder to write the truth, and I'll continue to write --  
  
Yes, sirs. I'll gather my things, don't worry, and be out by the morning.  
  
Thank you, gentlemen, for at the very least listening before delivering my punishment.  
  
Goodbye.  
  
--------------------------  
  
Author's notes:  
  
I do believe that this is the first Denton/David fanfic to come into existence. Whether this is a good thing or not, I don't know ^^;;;  
  
Anyway, this was originally written on August 7, 2001, but since then has been the victim of many nonconsecutive edits on my part, the last being the publishing date (February 5, 2002)  
  
I got Denton's age by doing a little bit of math – I took the year Bill Pullman was born (1953) and subtracted it from the year Newsies was released (1992), thus getting…39 x_X;; That seemed too old to me, so I lowered it a little, but enough for it to be too far from the original. I originally had him aged in his middle to late 20s, but it looks like I got a surprise o.o;; I know it comes close to being pedophilic, but quite frankly, they're fictional characters, and I know most people won't like it. I have mixed feelings on it myself, mostly because of the age thing.  
  
I don't support this pairing (it borders on bizarre, atypical, and slightly disturbing), but I thought it would be something interesting to write about, and I tried to make it fit into the movie continuation as well as I could. If you're open-minded about what could have happened off-camera, boom, you get this pretty easily.  
  
Also, I *HATE* anything by Dickens, especially Hard Times, but the story seemed appropriate for Rosemary to tell Denton.  
  
I should try writing something fluffy; I do too much angst.  
  
Thanks for reading, and if please review…I'm anxious to know exactly how this is going to be received. 


End file.
